Customer-Centric Roundup: May 2017

It has been another eventful month for customer experience innovations and advancements. There is a lot to process from the month of May. So let's dive right into it and look at some of the biggest customer experience stories and trends.

Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2017

For the uninitiated, Mary Meeker is an American venture capitalist and was listed as the 77th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. Annually, she releases one of the most highly anticipated reports on internet trends. This year’s report is over 350 slides and jam-packed with everything from the state of the internet in China to the explosion of eSports to the digital evolution of music and video.

USA e-commerce growth is up 15 percent year over year with US spending online narrowing in on $400B per year (Page 76).

The intersection of AI and the Customer Experience

AI is a hot topic at the moment and its applications are wide reaching. Think Echo, Amazon’s smart speaker, which is powered by AI technology. Also Facebook has been allowing third parties to use AI bots through its Messenger app.

This rise of AI technology is opening up a new world of experiences. Steven Van Belleghem wrote about how you can use AI technology to help turn the customer experience into customer science. He not only looked at how we are becoming an AI-first world but also looked at how AI can promote loyalty.

What’s wrong with personalization

The era of personalization is well and truly here with 96 percent of digital marketers agreeing with the statement - personalization advances customer relationships. Yet, more than 55 percent say the industry isn’t getting personalization right, according to Ernan Roman and a new study from Evergage.

Ernan Roman wrote in his article for CMO.com that traditional customer experience and personalization are no longer effective. That’s because the decision-making journey is neither linear nor simplistic, and customers are complex, not cohorts. This means that to get personalization right brands need to start using explicit data and stop making statistical inferences from a customer’s purchase and browsing history.

The future of digital marketing

On May 22, digital marketing leaders descended on San Francisco to discuss the latest forces and trends shaping the future of marketing at the Google Marketing Next conference. Matt Lawson shared some of his takeaways from the conference in an article for Think With Google.

Some of his takeaways include:

“For every second delay in mobile page load, conversions can fall by up to 20 percent.”

“Innovative measurement tools will help marketers bridge the digital and physical worlds.”

“Once you have a comprehensive view of your customers, the next step is to reach them in the right moment with the right message.”

Today, technology has infiltrated every facet of the marketing world. From content marketing to email marketing to the customer experience, technology is playing a central role.

To make sense of marketing technology, Chief Marketing Technologist Editor Scott Brinker recently released his annual Marketing Technology Landscape graphic (which he named the ‘Martech 5000’ this year). This graphic explores and explains how the various facets of the industry are moving forward.

Blog post of the month: [CHEAT SHEET] How to Get Your C-Suite to Buy-In to the Customer Experience

It’s one thing to say that you want your organization to improve the customers’ experience, but it’s quite another to put it in practice. This requires your entire organization to get all its ducks in a row and make sure this common goal is the driving force behind all the company's decisions.

In May, Duff Anderson, SVP and Co-founder at iperceptions, put together a cheat sheet for customer experience professionals, which provides tips and tricks on on how to get buy-in from each member of the c-suite for a customer experience program.

Customer-Centric Roundup: May 2017

It has been another eventful month for customer experience innovations and advancements. There is a lot to process from the month of May. So let's dive right into it and look at some of the biggest customer experience stories and trends.

Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2017

For the uninitiated, Mary Meeker is an American venture capitalist and was listed as the 77th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. Annually, she releases one of the most highly anticipated reports on internet trends. This year’s report is over 350 slides and jam-packed with everything from the state of the internet in China to the explosion of eSports to the digital evolution of music and video.

USA e-commerce growth is up 15 percent year over year with US spending online narrowing in on $400B per year (Page 76).

The intersection of AI and the Customer Experience

AI is a hot topic at the moment and its applications are wide reaching. Think Echo, Amazon’s smart speaker, which is powered by AI technology. Also Facebook has been allowing third parties to use AI bots through its Messenger app.

This rise of AI technology is opening up a new world of experiences. Steven Van Belleghem wrote about how you can use AI technology to help turn the customer experience into customer science. He not only looked at how we are becoming an AI-first world but also looked at how AI can promote loyalty.

What’s wrong with personalization

The era of personalization is well and truly here with 96 percent of digital marketers agreeing with the statement - personalization advances customer relationships. Yet, more than 55 percent say the industry isn’t getting personalization right, according to Ernan Roman and a new study from Evergage.

Ernan Roman wrote in his article for CMO.com that traditional customer experience and personalization are no longer effective. That’s because the decision-making journey is neither linear nor simplistic, and customers are complex, not cohorts. This means that to get personalization right brands need to start using explicit data and stop making statistical inferences from a customer’s purchase and browsing history.

The future of digital marketing

On May 22, digital marketing leaders descended on San Francisco to discuss the latest forces and trends shaping the future of marketing at the Google Marketing Next conference. Matt Lawson shared some of his takeaways from the conference in an article for Think With Google.

Some of his takeaways include:

“For every second delay in mobile page load, conversions can fall by up to 20 percent.”

“Innovative measurement tools will help marketers bridge the digital and physical worlds.”

“Once you have a comprehensive view of your customers, the next step is to reach them in the right moment with the right message.”

Today, technology has infiltrated every facet of the marketing world. From content marketing to email marketing to the customer experience, technology is playing a central role.

To make sense of marketing technology, Chief Marketing Technologist Editor Scott Brinker recently released his annual Marketing Technology Landscape graphic (which he named the ‘Martech 5000’ this year). This graphic explores and explains how the various facets of the industry are moving forward.

Blog post of the month: [CHEAT SHEET] How to Get Your C-Suite to Buy-In to the Customer Experience

It’s one thing to say that you want your organization to improve the customers’ experience, but it’s quite another to put it in practice. This requires your entire organization to get all its ducks in a row and make sure this common goal is the driving force behind all the company's decisions.

In May, Duff Anderson, SVP and Co-founder at iperceptions, put together a cheat sheet for customer experience professionals, which provides tips and tricks on on how to get buy-in from each member of the c-suite for a customer experience program.